Why I Quit Auto-Following on Twitter: Reflections of a Social Media Addict

I am a huge fan of scalable automation. When you average 40 new twitter follows and 20 Fb friend requests a day, it helps to streamline the process. Not of building the relationship-but the initial connection.
A few months ago, I even said Auto Responders were a Do.
So, why am I now stopping automated following on Twitter?
1. Spammers on the rise. This was a given. I automated the initial follow for 2 main reasons: so I wouldn’t miss out on anyone by accident, and I could streamline the process. Now, I am annoyed that there are so many spammers who get auto-followed by my good intentions.
2. Twitter can’t differentiate between automation and spamming. There has been a spamming practice on the rise, where bots (and sadly some people) will follow you, you follow back, and then they unfollow you. This skews their numbers (making them look like a non-spammer). Twitter is cracking down on folks who follow lots of people, and it can’t differentiate by intention.
3. All the cool kids are doing it. Well, that’s not a real reason, but a lot of my reasons are the same as Maria’s for stopping the auto follow process.
What’s the downside?
Manually following each person will inevitably take up more time – and space in my inbox. And time is a rare commodity.
The upside?
I can duck spammers.

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